Dominatrix - Danielle J Lindemann

Our lives are full of small tensions, our closest relationships
full of struggle: between woman and man, artist and customer, purist and
commercialist, professional and client-and between the dominant and
the submissive.

In Dominatrix, Danielle
Lindemann draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews with professional
dominatrices in New York City and San Francisco to offer a
sophisticated portrait of these unusual professionals, their work, and
their clients. Prior research on sex work has focused primarily on
prostitutes and most studies of BDSM absorb pro-domme/client
relationships without exploring what makes them unique. Lindemann
satisfies our curiosity about these paid encounters, shining a light on
one of the most secretive and least understood of personal relationships
and unthreading a heretofore unexamined patch of our social tapestry.
Upending the idea that these erotic laborers engage in simple exchanges and
revealing the therapeutic and analytic nature of their work, Lindemann
makes a major contribution to cultural studies, anthropology, and queer
studies with her analysis of how gender, power, sexuality, and hierarchy
shape all of our social experiences.